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Bruce Schneier was invited to testify about the TSA to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, but at the last minute he was disinvited, after the TSA objected to having him in the room.

Hey Great Lakes THATCampers! We're just under a month away from what promises to be a very exciting unconference. We've got a full day of workshops on Friday (be sure to email us at glthatcamp2012 [at] gmail [dot] com with your workshop choices if you haven't done so already!), topped off with a meet-and-greet hosted at London's own UnLab on the Friday evening. Saturday will be a day of sessions, and it is truly a day that is up to you, the CAMPERS, to make your own. In order to get you started, we've put together a list of a few of the session ideas you have suggested in your applications. Now that you are all registered as contributors, you are able to post about what you'd like to see happen on the 21st and 22nd. The more talk there is about the sessions prior to Great Lakes THATCamp, the faster we can get going on the Saturday morning, so please join in and help us out!

Grade-school students in a northeastern Brazilian city are using uniforms embedded with computer chips that alert parents if they are cutting classes, the city's education secretary, Coriolano Moraes, said Thursday. Twenty-thousand students in 25 of Vitória da Conquista's 213 public schools started using T-shirts with chips this week, Mr. Moraes said. By 2013, all of the city's 43,000 public school students will be using them, he added. The chips send a text message to the cellphones of parents when their children enter the school or alert the parents if their children have not arrived 20 minutes after classes have begun. The city government invested $670,000 in the project, Mr. Moraes said.

The Google+ team continues to graduate features from its sandbox into prime time for its Hangouts product. Last week, the company announced the addition of Google Docs into Hangouts, and today the service has officially added the ability to make phone calls from within a Hangout as well.

The Horto Domi combines vermiculture, geodesic domes, moisture sensors, and Arduino open hardware controllers in an automated backyard food growing system for the everyperson. The project team is looking for supporters on Kickstarter so they can do more R&D and make the plans available to the public for free. Soon you could have a pod of robotic food growing domes in your backyard turning out bushels of fresh veg. Then again, maybe a food growing robot takes the joy out of growing your own?

AT 7 years old, Gilad Elbaz wrote, "I want to be a rich mathematician and very smart." That, he figured, would help him "discover things like time machines, robots and machines that can answer any question."

I didn't know whether to take my Ph.D. adviser's remark as a compliment. "You don't write like a scientist," he said, handing me back the progress report for a grant that I had written for him. In my dream world, tears would have come to his eyes, and he would have squealed, "You write like a poet!"

AT 7 years old, Gilad Elbaz wrote, "I want to be a rich mathematician and very smart." That, he figured, would help him "discover things like time machines, robots and machines that can answer any question."

London, UK, June 16 and 17: Open IoT Assembly: "In 2011 Pachube published this attempt at a Bill of Rights for the Internet of Things. Data ownership will continue to be one of the defining issues of this decade. As the Internet of Things matures, clear lines will be drawn as companies bring products and services to market. Business models will be built on one of two philosophies:       *    Controlling a customer's access to their data and limiting its use to a single service. Profiting through vendor lock-in and switching costs/hassle.     *    Maximizing the value that is built on top of data and constantly innovating. Building a product that customers choose based on its own merits.

Nano-cargo jet rockets were useful tasks in the body can perform. Packets deliver drugs or substances to signal tumor. Science fiction? Nope, not anymore. Nature chemistry published in February a paper of Nijmegen chemists which they explain how they make a nano rocket. "We think this is the first real nanomotor," says lead author Daniela Wilson.

There's a new TED-Ed series that tackles questions that we don't know the answer to. In this first episode, TED Curator Chris Anderson asks: How many universes are there? And Why can't we see evidence of alien life? On the latter question, his answers are somewhat pedestrian and even outlandish, but Anderson takes a wide swath at the possibilities and includes some genuine solutions, including the Great Filter and postbiological existence.

Here's some bad news for those of you who like to think you can think rationally about risk. You can't. You know all those thoughtfully considered views you have about nuclear power or genetically modified food or climate change? They are really no more than a jumble of facts, and how you feel about those facts. That's right. They're just your opinions. Which is bad news, because no matter how right you feel, you might be wrong. And being wrong about risk is risky, to you AND to others.

Summary:  A series of Executive Orders during the past century has slowly expanded the authority of the Executive Branch.  Now President Hope and Change takes a large step forward toward a new order, issuing a blueprint for tyranny.  Don't worry, it will be implemented slowly.  One cannot boil a frog slowly (it jumps out), but one can bake a Republic.

Did you know that vital parts of the US law are secret, and you're only allowed to read them if you pay a standards body thousands of dollars for the right to find out what the law of the land is?

Richard Feynman was obviously famous for his work as a physicist, but he's also widely regarded as one of the most lucid and effective lecturers to ever address an audience. So renowned, so readily accessible were his presentations, that his introductory physics lectures (which he delivered to undergraduates at Caltech) have since been immortalized in the form of a three-volume set called, quite simply, The Feynman Lectures.

I decided to make a side table for my desk so that I wouldn't have so much clutter around me and so that I had a side table that was exactly the right height and size for what I needed. The desk will hold the UPS on one side and the PC on the other, that will clean up 2 of the 3 major things around my desk (the last one being a subwoofer, but thats another project...). This is the desk it will be going next to and this is why it is such an odd shape.

Gamers angered at the "bleak" ending of Mass Effect 3 have campaigned for an alternate conclusion - and raised more than $70,000 (£44,000) for charity.

DARPA is unveiling a portable laser weapons system, HELLADS, which seems like something out of a sci-fi movie. The new laser application, created by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems with a custom power system from Saft Batteries, will help change the way the American military fights future wars. Current military laser systems are bulky contraptions which are mainly the size of a passenger jet, while the proposed DARPA weapon can fit on the back of a flatbed truck. The 150-kilowatt, solid state laser weapon is strong enough to take down drones or other aerial targets; a prototype is expected to be available by the end of 2012.

In a stunning move, on March 16, 2012, Barack Obama signed an Executive Order stating that the President and his specifically designated Secretaries now have the authority to commandeer all domestic U.S. resources including food and water. The EO also states that the President and his Secretaries have the authority to seize all transportation, energy, and infrastructure inside the United States as well as forcibly induct/draft American citizens into the military. The EO also contains a vague reference in regards to harnessing American citizens to fulfill "labor requirements" for the purposes of national defense.

What's in store for robotics in 2012? Nearly a quarter of the year is already behind us, but we thought we'd spend some time looking at the months ahead and make some predictions about what's going to be big in robotics.